Ninth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Built in 1929, the metal granary manufactured by The Martin Steel Products in Mansfield, Ohio, is located a quarter mile west of Napier, Iowa. The building made a locally significant contribution to Iowa’s agricultural history as a rare-surviving corn drying facility. The facility is obsolete and has not been used since the 1970’s. Our goal here is to act on such circumstances with sincere sensitivity in collaboration with the extant building’s past and material presence in effort to conceive of a new occupation by which we might intensify its environmental scale and complexity and thereby re-occupy and meticulously inter-connect it and ourselves with its contemporary cultural context. The architectural intent is to preserve the historic building envelope and maintain the authenticity and atmospheric quality of this particular space by adopting it and caring for it in all aspects. Our goal for the interior is to retain the character-defining industrial features – concrete auger trench and floors, mono-skin perforated corrugated galvanized steel walls, and exposed structural steel. Into this, we installed a new tabernacle and ascent against a perforated view of the horizon. Drawing from pre-Columbian granaries, the tabernacle is situated overhead the lower landing of the stair assembly and consists of a shaped cedar wood mantel, piano tuning pegs and cast aluminum bladder in which to store grain. The ascent is a suspended steel plate stair assembly aligned with the concrete auger trench and leading to a single aperture through which to obtain a discrete view of the moon at nightfall.